Uganda Women's Network is a membership network of different women's non-governmental organisations, which was set up in 1993, with the main purpose of uplifting the status of Ugandan women through addressing critical concerns. Among the concerns identified by UWONET is the promotion of women's access to power and decision-making positions in all sectors. To this effect, UWONET will produce a directory of professional women. The second edition will be published by April 2001. Copies of the First Edition are available at Uganda Shillings 7,500 or US Dollars (US$) 5. Please get yourself a copy of the Directory.
Contact person: Sheila Kawamara-Mishambi, Coordinator UWONET. Email: uwonet@starcom.co.ug

• it is usually easier to familiarise oneself with local issues, thus lowering the threshold for women to step forward and do something about it;
• standard administrative procedures undergo a complete overhaul, opening up possibilities to integrate gender issues in the planning and implementation processes.

In Uganda, a "Gender and Decentralisation Programme" was implemented in Lira District, Northern Uganda. The programme ran from February to April 1997 and was funded by the Netherlands Government. It aimed at creating community level awareness on the need to support women in their efforts to effectively participate in local governing bodies. Two-day workshops were carried out in each of the 24 sub-counties of Lira district and the four divisions of Lira municipality. The programme provided opportunities for women and men to discuss and examine the issue of women in leadership positions. A strategic moment was chosen: just before the Local Council elections. The programme provided a chance for women to strategize for effective participation in community leadership.

Ms. Maude Mugisha, a consultant to the ''Gender and Decentralisation Programme,'' returned to the district at the request of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations, to draw lessons from the Lira District experience with regard to mobilising community support for women's participation in decentralised decision-making.

This article is published in Women's Studies International Forum, Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 435-439, 1999: Elsevier Science Ltd. USA.

Women in African Economies cuts across the many sectors of Uganda's economy, reaching from a woman who sells her surplus beans and maize in the village market to one who creates an international air freight business. A broad review of the role of the informal sector and women's participation in Africa's and Uganda's economic life is followed by a history of the surge of women's entrepreneurship during the Amin and Obote years, and women's political activism after 1986. The central thesis of the study is that as women create wealth and invest it in human well-being - their own and others' children - they broaden (democratize) their country's economic base; in so doing, they offer a new, non-western model of development.

What do these business women say about the purpose of economic growth? What are their priorities for investing their income? How do they advise young women with the urge to start a business? Among the 74 Ugandan women farmers, merchants and entrepreneurs in Women in African Economies: from Burning Sun to Boardroom who respond to those questions are Lilian Kahenano, who started with 20 loaves of bread, turned them into a super market and now sells real estate. Daisy Kayizzi, a single mother who sells cooking bananas (matoke) and Irish potatoes, invested in a small plot of land, a house, and schooling for her 5 children. Alice Wacha who says "God made me a builder", built two retail stores and several houses to rent in addition to those her family and her mother live in. Regina Nalongo Kabanda used her own small savings to start raising vanilla for export. Wamage's cash crop - rice - was less helpful: her husband built a new house and installed a new wife in it.

Many of these women are contending with globalization's competitive effects and with the structural adjustment programs urged on their governments by donors, that among other effects, make health care inaccessible.

The author, a long-time development professional who worked in Eastern Africa for 15 years and founding Director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), argues that women's rising entrepreneurial spirit makes it essential to a country's self-interest and development to recognize, measure, give a monetary value to, celebrate and support their economic productivity. By boosting women's entrepreneurship with positive policies and actions, policy makers and international investors can counter poverty while giving the world an economic justice and growth model. The author may be contacted at Pegsnyder@aol.com.

Women & Politics in Uganda, which won a 2001 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award, explains why the women's movement in Uganda has made its presence felt so forcefully and quickly in this country since 1986. Unlike women's movements in other African countries, the Ugandan women's movement has distinguished itself by establishing greater autonomy from the state, suggesting that societal autonomy is critical to its efficacy, although other key factors are also discussed. The study is based on a series of case studies involving conflicts between women's associations and local level authorities; hundreds of in-depth interviews with politicians as well as leaders and members of women's associations at the local and national levels; and a survey of associational life in four parts of the country.

Aili Mari Tripp is the author of Women & Politics in Uganda. Tripp is an associate professor in political science and women's studies and the Director of the Women's Studies Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in the United States. She may be contacted at tripp@polisci.wisc.edu.